Chennai: Following the last chance given by the Health Ministry to all medical colleges to convert their PG Diploma seats into MD/MS seats, the Tamil Nadu government is reported to have put forward 393 Post-Graduate (PG) Diploma seats including those in specialisation of Gynaecology, Dermatology and Orthopaedics in front of Union Health Ministry for conversion to PG degrees.

Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported that two weeks ago, the Union Health Ministry had issued a public notice giving a last chance to medical colleges to take advantage of the scheme proposed by the Medical Council of India (MCI) which decided to stop all MCI recognised PG diploma courses in Medical colleges and give equal number of MD/MS seats in return.

Following the public notice, the Tamil Nadu Health secretary Dr J Radhakrishnan had written to the Union Government regarding the conversion of all diploma courses in 14 specialities across six government-run medical colleges.

Mentioned below is the number of PG Diploma seats at various government medical colleges that the state had sent applications for:

214- Madras Medical College

52 – Stanley Medical College

14 – Kilpauk Medical College

79 – Madurai Medical College

23 – Thanjavur Medical College

11 – Coimbatore Medical College

Talking about the aim behind sending these applications, the Health Secretary told TOI, “Our aim is to double the number of PG seats in the next 2-3 years.”

“Upcoming multispecialty hospitals in cities like Madurai will also fetch us more PG seats,” he added.

The daily further informs that this year only, Tamil Nadu has been allowed to add 56 PG degrees in 8 medical colleges taking the total number of seats in 2019 to at least 1,306. The Directorate of Medical Education is expecting at least 100 more seats that would take the total number to at least 1,800.

While the move of conversion of PG Diploma seats in commensurate MD/MS seats at medical colleges will indeed benefit the future PG students who are going to pursue specialisation in the medical colleges in India, the present PG Diploma students are left in Limbo as they have no avenue to promotions owing to their present degrees.